Adobe DRM Just Went From Bad to Worse

As if being forced to buy ebooks crippled by Adobe’s DRM isn’t bad enough, now Adobe’s system has been hacked and all the Adobe DRM ID’s and passwords have been compromised.

If you’ve ever been required to create an account with Adobe just to be able to read your purchased ebooks on the device or app of your choosing, then you probably received an email from Adobe over the weekend. Something along the lines of this:

We recently discovered that an attacker illegally entered our network and may have obtained access to your Adobe ID and encrypted password. We currently have no indication that there has been unauthorized activity on your account.

Adobe has already gone in and reset all the passwords; now users have to create a new one in order to regain access to their accounts.

Adobe also suggests that it’s a good idea to change the password on any accounts that use the same email address and password combination as your Adobe account. The hackers have that information so it’s no longer secure on non-Adobe websites too. Good luck remembering all the places that you use the same password and email…

An Adobe account for getting access to your purchased ebooks only requires you to give an email address and setup a password, so at least there’s no credit card information given, but if you use the same password and email address combination for other websites then it could be a problem. That’s why it’s a good idea to use different passwords for everything.

This is just another obvious reason to do away with Adobe DRM entirely. It’s not enough that Adobe is ruining your purchased ebooks by placing senseless restrictions on them and making publishers pay extra licensing fees. Now Adobe is comprising your personal information as well. A company that has nothing to do with ebooks is doing their best to ruin ebooks just so they can get in on the money generated by the ebook market. I say down with Adobe and their rigged DRM system. It’s time to move onto something better.

4 Responses to “Adobe DRM Just Went From Bad to Worse”

I never buy books with DRM. And I never ever will.
I bought approximately 60 ebooks last year. All of them un-crippled and un-infected.

Those publisher who cripple their books can go f*ck themselves. They only handicap honest buyers, because even my century old granny can remove DRM these days. It is that simple. So DRM is pointless ever which way you look at it.

The DRM using ebook industry is on a path of self destruction, just like the music industry has been for so many years. These idiots never learn.

This may mark me as an ignoramus but is the Amazon model for the ereader better? I mean, there is no need to sign up with Adobe such as downloading Adobe digital additions to one’s laptop to sideload books for instance.

Again, forgiveness asked as I have a bit of knowledge which makes me dangerous(ly) dumb!

Many would argue that Adobe is better because it is more “open”. Ebook stores use that model so that readers feel like they have freedom to read their ebooks on whichever devices they choose, but it’s all just smoke and mirrors. DRM is an ugly beast no matter which form it takes. Adobe is a joke. They don’t care about the evolution of the ebook in the least; all they care about is publishers paying them licensing fees to use Adobe DRM, which really serves no purpose because anyone can remove it with little to no effort. If Adobe really cared they’d actively close the holes in their DRM like Apple does with iBooks. So yeah, right now I think Amazon’s model is better. DRM sucks either way, but at least with Amazon they make everything a lot easier and more convenient. There’s a lot less hassle when dealing with Amazon for ebooks in all phases of the game.